I’m taking a bit of heat via email for the list of initiatives when managing a turnaround included in my review of Hardball.

Specifically, people have taken issue with these two points:

- Don’t allow people to identify obstacles to change without also proposing solutions to overcome them
- Don’t tolerate failure to deliver more than once

Now, this isn’t my list, it’s the authors’. I may not agree with all of the points, but to be fair I stole the headings without providing the supporting arguments.

Regarding not tolerating failure to deliver: the author’s aren’t referring to doing something incorrect/wrong; rather, they’re talking about failure to execute. While I think it would be stupid for a manager to not accept failure, when managing a turnaround failure to execute (/ do things) is a pretty big sin.

Regarding not allowing people to identify obstacles without proposing solutions: I had an interesting discussion today on this. I think it’s fairly important to keep the culture positive and focused on forward momentum, and too many people drawing attention to potential barriers to change may cause the entire organization to fail to deliver.


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Book Admin Cont’d

Posted on 04.10.07 to Media. Subscribe to follow comments on this post. Add your thoughts or trackback from your own site.

Welcome to the conversation.

Hi, I'm Fraser and this is my personal site where I write about the things I'm interested in: start-up strategy, the web, music, and life.

My days are spent commercializing emerging technologies. Currently I'm helping to deliver the promise of semantic web to the consumer market at AdaptiveBlue. Previously I was at Trivaris, a Canadian seed stage investment firm.

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